As well as the photo in my hand, there are loads of others, some of them cut from magazines. There is a copy of Soul magazine, with a picture of Felina on the front, and a load more photos and text inside; a copy of the Sun newspaper from ten years ago, with a black-edged picture of her on the front and the headline RIP Felina.

There’s a copy of the Guardian as well, folded over on a page headlined Obituaries, which is where anyone famous who has died gets their life story printed.

I read the whole thing.

FELINA

Smoky-voiced pop singer whose catchy hits could not hide her inner torment

Another name has been added to the sad list of victims of the wild rock-and-roll lifestyle: pop and soul singer Felina, who has been found dead at the age of twenty-four. The cause of her death is not yet clear.

One of the most successful artists of her generation, her distinctive voice – and equally distinctive appearance – created an appeal across generations, making her the top-selling pop artist of recent years. But Felina suffered from serious drug and alcohol addiction that plagued her life.

Her second album, The Cat’s Whiskers, occupied the number-one slot for four weeks, and propelled her to a level of fame that – some would say – became her downfall.

She was born Miranda Enid Mackay to a middle-class family in south London. Her salesman father, Gordon, and her mother, Belinda, later divorced.

By the age of seven Felina was attending drama classes locally, but it soon became clear that music was her first love. Rebellious instincts surfaced in her early teens: at fourteen, by her own admission, she was smoking cigarettes and had acquired her first tattoo, a cat on her upper arm. ‘My parents couldn’t control me, and that was that,’ she said later.

Her singing teacher passed an MP3 file of her singing to a record company. Aged just seventeen, she signed a deal with Slick Records, but her rebelliousness had already caused a rift with her parents, and she moved out of the family home, beginning a relationship with fellow musician Ricky Malcolm.

Her first song, ‘Say You Can’, was released just after her nineteenth birthday. As ‘Felina’, she burst onto the scene, and her ‘cat’ make-up and costuming was immediately both mocked and admired.

It certainly got her noticed. Headline appearances followed, plus a string of hits, including the song that will now be forever associated with her, ‘Light the Light’. That song began a US breakthrough that was to be cut short by her death.

The hits continued, although it was becoming clear that the showbiz lifestyle was taking its toll. A string of cancelled concert appearances led to rumours – strongly denied at the time – that she had drug and alcohol problems.

Paparazzi were soon following her around the streets of London. She seldom appeared in public without her trademark ‘cat’ make-up, usually accompanied by upswept sunglasses.

Felina won a Brit Awards nomination for Best Female Artist, and was nominated in the same year for a Mercury Music Prize and the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriting.

She unexpectedly married Ricky Malcolm, and a child soon followed, a girl whom they named Tiger Pussycat.

Motherhood did not seem to come naturally to Felina and she attracted hostile comments when she embarked on a world tour, leaving six-month-old Tiger Pussycat to be looked after by her grandmother.

After an apparently drunk Felina was photographed on the street at night with her young daughter, record sales plummeted.

At the time, her mother laid the blame squarely at Ricky Malcolm’s feet, blaming him for ‘leading my daughter astray’ and ‘infecting her with the virus of instant fame’.

At the time of her death, Felina and Ricky Malcolm had separated. He was on tour in New Zealand and returned to the UK yesterday.

Felina’s body was discovered in her home by police on Saturday morning. The official cause of death has not been established, although a drug overdose is strongly suspected. In a view that many will share, however, her mother has said in a statement that the talented Felina had been ‘killed by celebrity’.

Miranda Enid Mackay, ‘Felina’, is survived by her parents and her daughter.

It has taken me ages to read this, and I’m staring at the page, sad and confused.

It’s more than the story of a singer’s life ruined by celebrity excess. It’s more than ‘Tiger Pussycat’ – the words that Great-gran whispered to me that time – turning out to be some poor kid’s name. There is something – several things – about that story that touch me in a place I can’t identify.

I replace the newspaper in the tin, and start looking at other items. There are reports of Felina winning awards, stories of Felina coming out of a nightclub with Ricky Malcolm, with his long hair and all-over tattoos, and in all of them she’s in her cat get-up.

I’ve got to hand it to her: she did very well at concealing who she really was – or anyway, what she really looked like. It was a façade, a disguise. Always wearing – at the very least – the dark, feline glasses, and lashings of crimson lipstick.

I want to know more. I keep rummaging in the metal box, there on Gram’s bedroom floor. More photos, more cuttings.

I’m checking the clock on my phone. Gram’s been gone an hour, and I don’t want to risk being caught, so I’m putting everything back the way I found it when one last article catches my eye.

It’s taken from the Daily Mail and the headline is:

Felina – The Unseen Pictures of Pop’s Tragic Princess.

I open the folded paper, and in that second my whole life changes.

Felina – Miranda Mackay – is my mum.